John August

Words on the page

High net-worth individuals

Rant, Words on the page

I’ve encounted this euphemism for “rich people” at least five times this week. It’s not exactly new; I’ve heard it occasionally for the last few years. But I don’t know where it came from, or how long it’s been gaining traction around the memosphere.

This morning’s appearance came in a [Variety article](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117953808.html?categoryid=13&cs=1) about Radar’s Ted Field acquiring roughly $600 million in financing:

The financial partners in Radar’s fund are a combination of equity financiers and high net-worth individuals, including JP Morgan & Co., D.E. Shaw & Co., Kevin Flynn, the Rothman family, Cardinal Growth, GE Capital, US Bank, CIT and Mercantile Bank.

Kevin Flynn is an individual. The Rothman family presumably counts — though technically, they’re not an individual. You or I would just call them rich, wealthy or loaded. So why doesn’t Variety?

My theory is that super-rich people are actually a bit embarrassed by their vast wealth. “High net-worth individual” is a way of obfuscating and distracting from the dollar signs. Don’t judge me; I have a condition. It’s scientific. It’s treatable: “Oh, I’m not rich. I just have a high net worth.”

To refer back to the old-school SAT analogies:

alcoholism::disease
wealth:: high net worth

My friend Chuck is a VP at a bank that specializes in high net-worth individuals. (Which, to be fair, makes a lot more sense than banking for the poor and indigent.) When I ask him about his job, Chuck uses the HNWI term a lot, generally to protect the anonymity of his clients. Hearing him talk about it, one realizes that vast wealth is like a supertanker; it’s actually kind of a pain in the ass to move it around.

The only time it gets awkward with Chuck is when he refers to, “high net-worth individuals such as yourself.” I can never tell if he’s being generous or deluded. My net worth is high compared with, say, a Kentucky coal miner. But I’m not looking for places to park $600 million. “High” is clearly a relative term.

Which leads to my second hunch: “high net-worth individual” was coined because there’s a vast realm between millionaires and billionaires, and you need something to call these people.

The film industry increasingly calls them partners, because they’re bankrolling many of the super-budgeted movies filling our megaplexes. But I wonder if we’ve lost something by reducing our tycoons and barons to mere high net-worth individuals. Great wealth is supposed to invoke romance, intrigue and familial drama, not spreadsheets and hedge funds. Just by giving it a new term, they’ve taken away half the reason to be rich.

Using overheard dialogue

QandA, Rights and Copyright, Words on the page

(?)Let’s say I’m at work and I overhear some great dialogue. Can I use it, or should I worry about my co-workers suing me when they hear it in my movie?

— Kobe
via imdb

Use it. Just as a photographer freely captures the visible world with a lens, a writer needs to record not just what people say, but how they say it. Ninety-nine percent of the spoken word is lost forever, which mean you have the liberty, nay, the obligation to poach dialogue from real life.

Just don’t be a dick about it. There’s a moral equivalent of the “fair use” law: don’t take whole speeches, and don’t leave in details that would reveal who the real-life speaker was. Also, keep in mind that certain co-workers might be writers themselves. If Witty Writer says something clever, there’s a good chance she’s going to want to keep it for herself. And she should.

When characters have multiple names

Formatting, QandA, Words on the page

questionmarkIn screenwriting classes they say not to introduce a character by one name only to switch it later on. For example, introducing a character as BARTENDER only to change it to BOB two pages later for no reason. However this feels like a different situation than my problem.

In my script there is a character that, for the sake of an important reveal later on, lies about his identity to the protagonist. In the script right now, the character introduction has his real name, while in the dialog he is referred to by his fake name. This ruins the important reveal later for someone reading the script.

The best example from a movie I can think of is the movie Charade. In Charade, Cary Grant’s character goes through at least three or four names.

How is this handled format-wise?

— J. Jovel
via imdb

In general, treat your reader like an audience member. As much as possible, you want to give readers the same information on the page that they would get on the screen. So if the character is introducing himself as “Mr. Truefake,” that’s what you should call him in the script.

In the third act, when it’s revealed that his real name is actually Ichabod Donnweather, it’s up to you whether you want to change his name in the scene description. If he’s only going to be sticking around for a page or two, you might consider using both names, like Truefake/Donnweather.

Another option is a quick explanatory note: “For clarity, we’ll continue to refer to him as Truefake.”

Either way, I’d advise you to keep using the original name in some form. Readers often lose track of characters, and changing up the names will generally make the situation worse.

Writing what can’t be shot

Charlie, Dead Projects, QandA, Words on the page

questionmarkI was wondering what your thoughts are about occasionally adding exposition into action lines, when it can’t be explicitly shown on screen.

For example:

The room bursts out in laughter, which quickly turns into applause. A few EXECS standing at the back of the room smile to each other, and nod their heads in amusement. The publishing wunderkind, #29 on Forbes’ Top 30 under 30, has done it again! The pleased crowd begins to disperse.

Since this information isn’t actually going to be shown to the audience in the scene, is it bad form to add it in? Or is it helpful in giving the reader a quick sense of the character and making the action lines a little less dry?

— Isaac Aptaker

Your specific example probably wouldn’t be to my taste. Once you have the people in the room smile, laugh, applaud and nod, it’s hard to justify another line to underscore the point again.

But in general, yes. Used judiciously, these for-the-reader-only snippets are fine. I often find myself using them when introducing an important character for the first time.

From Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

Mother Bucket is an ever-exhausted woman in her late 30’s, run ragged from taking care of Charlie and the four invalid grandparents. Many nights, she’s too tired to worry, and too worried to sleep.

From Barbarella:

FINNEA (29) comes up to Barbarella at the podium, and hugs her in a sisterly but somewhat obvious manner, as if trying to share her spotlight.

While Barbarella could be compared to the wildflowers she paints -- joyful, open and a bit scattered -- Finnea is like a cultivated rose. She’s very beautiful but very focused. And one suspects there are thorns to protect her.

Nothing in these descriptions is directly cinematic, but it gives the reader (and the director, and the actor) a much better idea of the intention. Just make sure that you’re never confusing these blips of exposition with real character work. Movies are about what characters do and say, not who they were before the story started.